College Tools: RateMyProfessors.com
Continuing with the College Tools post, I would like to introduce another useful tool: RateMyProfessors.com. This website is very well known in compared to the previous tool mentioned Cramster.com but not everyone seems to use it. In this website you will find a review on almost any teacher in your college. If he is not in the website for whatever reason then you should add a review to that teacher. Before people had to rely on a friend telling you what teachers are good, which ones are easy and etc. but now we can just hear from other students we don’t even know. A lot of professors are aware of this website and often like to criticize it because of course they do not want to accept the reality of them being a sucky professor or that there classes are extremely hard.
It is always a good idea to get some references on which teacher to take for your next class, the reviews are usually pretty accurate.
Yasser
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T-Mobile Outage.
T-Mobile seem to have suffered a massive outage today.According to some friends, text messages started getting delayed at around 5:30pm (Easter Time). After 6pm the text messages started to get lost and some messages never got sent. Calling was not allowed or receiving calls from 6-8pm. So far the problem seem to be in New York State, I’m not aware if it was a national problem or a regional problem or a national problem. As of now the problem seems to have been in limited parts because not many people are aware of this issue. For sure it seems like t-mobile users in VA weren’t affected by the outage.
It seems like it was a Nationwide issue according to Mashable, Gizmodo and other Blogs.
Yasser
Tags: Cellphones, T-Mobile
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Paranormal Activity.
It seems like in the past few days and weeks I keep hearing more and more people talk about this movie, Paranormal Activity. Everyone keeps saying that is very scary and you won’t be able to sleep well at night. I love horror, scary, gore movies so I couldn’t let this one pass. I went last night to see it and the movies was pretty packed surprisingly. The movie itself was not as scary as people made it seem.
The plot is a couple in a house that is haunted by some ghost or demon. The guy is trying to capture it on tape and record sounds to determine what it is. The whole movie is filmed on a handheld camera which reminds me of The Blair Witch Project right away. The movie itself is quite boring for many parts but once the creepy part is about to start, you can hear people crawling in their chairs. I do understand that the movie could be quite scary for some but for me it just didn’t do it. I suggest to go watch it in the movies because once it hits your T.V. it will never be creepy anymore.
PS: This movie is not based on a real story. Everyone in the movie is an actor.
Yasser
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Google OS Chrome Leaked.
TechCrunch earlier today had reported that a Google Chrome OS folder was online publicly with some information on the upcoming Operating System. After that information leaked a user found a way of getting the source code and compiling it which leaked even more information and snapshots of the OS. And now it is available to download from RapidShare.
Be warned that this is not guaranteed that it will work for you seeing as its a leak and not made for the public. The images don’t show anything exciting. Overall it looks like Google Chrome browser with some extra buttons. I will have to wait and see when more information is available to make a better judgement about it. As of now I don’t see this as a hit.
Yasser
Tags: Google, Google Chrome
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College Tools: Cramster.com
One of my favorite college tools that I discovered a bit late is Cramster.com. This website provides over 200 books in different fields with their homework solutions. Their subject range isn’t too big but it will help out mostly in Math, Computer Science, Biology and Physics. I would highly suggest to use this as an aid to compare your homework solutions to the solutions provided by Cramster. It is not very good to use it to just copy and paste your homework because you will fail the class (trust me). The solutions are given step by step so it is good to follow it and learn while you do it. The problem with the step by step is that it is not detailed and sometimes it might be a bit difficult to understand what they actually did. Cramster also provides a message board for when you need extra help with a problem or one of your homeworks is not listed on the website. Unfortunately Cramster.com isn’t really free…you can view all odd problem for free but if you want to see all the other problems then you will need to pay. The price isn’t very expensive and I think it is very well worth it. I signed up for the monthly pay of $4.17 which I believe was very well worth it. There are different plans that are more expensive but allow you to get more help and what not, it is up to you to see what suits you best. Don’t forget to cancel your subscription because it will keep charging you for ever if you don’t unsubscribe after you don’t need it anymore. I highly recommend to use this website as an aid to people in science and technical majors.
Yasser
Scheduling A Meeting Using Doodle.
If you host meetings or participate in some form of meeting then you know the hardest part of the meeting is trying to figure out a time when everyone is available. That is no longer that big of a problem thanks to Doodle. It is not a new service and it is a website that me and my friends have been using for about a year now. It works very simple, you set up possible times and days for the meeting and then people check the hours they are available on those certain dates. After everyone “votes” you can check when most people are free or everyone is free. It is very simple to use and not too complicated. Of course this is as simple as it gets so it doesn’t have anything too complicated and what not, it is just a simple way of scheduling meetings and events. Give it a try.
Yasser
Tags: Doodle
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
Before I went to see this movie I didn’t have a clear idea of what it was going to be about. All I knew was that the movie was based on a very popular book that I have not read and that it was about the relationaship with a guy who time travels. I also expected to be more on the side of a chick flick since all the girls seemed far more interested in this movie. After watching the movie, I must say, it is a really good movie. The movie keeps you interested right from the start, always keeps you wanting to know more and why or who. The movie at time gets a bit predictable and if you pay attention to some details you will figure out some things sooner than they explain. This is a very sad movie, or I seemed to think so, but yet very good. I would recommend this movie to anyone, girls specially or anyone with a good taste in movies.
Yasser
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Twitter Panic !
It seems that the great Twitter is down. I am not a Twitter user but found out about it earlier this morning on TechCrunch and now they announced that it is the cause of a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS). Of course most people would see this news and ask why are people panicking over this ? One main reason is that many websites use or depend on Twitter for certain functionality, thus, if Twitter doesn’t work then neither does there website. Another reason for the panic is that Twitter has become a news source where people around the world report incidents and news before any big news broadcaster could do it. So without no Twitter we are back to “slow” news around the world.
This brings up different topics too. Where is Twitters’ security team? If they are such a huge website then they should have better security and should had prevented this better. It also brings up the topic of Clouds computing, where people put all their eggs in one basket, and one thing breaks everything else does. This is another classic example of that. At this moment it seems that Twitter is stabilizing. Now the game should start of who is to blame? Was it a government attack?
Other websites affected some what: Facebook, LiveJournal and other smaller names.
Yasser
How Does Netflix Work ?
Have you ever wondered how Netflix is able to send and receive so many movies a day? My best guest would of been all automated, someone picks up and throws it in a machine that sorts and what not and then someone drops off at the mail box tons of movies to be shipped. I was wrong in so many ways. The Chicago Tribune wrote a very interesting article of how Netflix shipping works. The location of there Warehouses are not publicly known which gives them a bit extra of mystery on how everything works out. In a brief summary lets just say that the warehouses are plain and simple so no one could identify them. Work hours start at 3am and are done at about 5pm. People working there are average people for the most part. It works in an assembly line sort of fashion but people have to do a lot of manual work on it, not that many automated machines. At 3am trucks come in with the Movies that were returned, people inspect them and arrange and sort them, label them and off to a machine where it would scan its barcode and put it in the system. Then it looks for people who want that Movie and packs it up, prints address and what not and seals it. Every movie goes out at 5pm to the mail. If you want to get the full details I highly suggest reading the article, very good article.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Tags: Netflix
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MagMe: Read Magazines Online.
Not too long ago I wrote about a website called Mygazines.com that allowed users to read magazines online for free. They were scanned by people and had great quality, easy to read. Then a few months later that website ran into some legal issues and just recently re-launched but it doesn’t have as much content as it used to have before. Now LifeHacker reported a new website called MagMe that is intended to do just what the previous startup failed to. So far MagMe seems ok, it is not as good as Mygazines when it started but if they could run for a while without legal issues then it should be great. This is an easy way of reading magazines online for free.
Lets see how long this one lasts….
Yasser
Tags: Magazines
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